When asked to write a small piece pertaining to ethics and integrity in
business world, my first inclination was to draw on personal experience. Everyone has bad experiences to relate. We deal with a business, determine that we were treated shabbily therefore that business has no integrity. Or perhaps we disagree on implementation of a refund, hence business or owner has no ethics.
Rather than using ethics or integrity to describe business practices, a better definition might be "character".
My dusty old copy of Webster's New World Dictionary provides following definitions for use in this context:
>ethics...the study of standards of conduct and moral judgment; moral philosophy.
>integrity...the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity.
>character...an individual's pattern of behavior or personality; moral constitution. moral strength; self-discipline, fortitude, etc. reputation.
If you will look at these definitions you can see that ethics relates to standards of conduct. Period. Ethics are...no good or bad comes into mix. Integrity either is or isn't. Sound moral principle is relative to observer or end user.
It stands to reason, therefore, that best measure of good or bad practice falls to basic "character".
Okay, so what does all of this have to do with business. Well, I wish I had a nickel for every time someone has asked me following questions:
